2008-07-18 19:38:40 - MRI Improves Fees and Features Builder™ and ProductBuilder™ Web-based Research to Give Financial Institutions More Comprehensive View of Competitors

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. (July 18, 2008) - Market Rates Insight (MRI, www.marketratesinsight.com/new), a leading research firm that tracks rates for deposits, loans, and fees to help financial institutions price with precision, today announced that it has expanded reporting on banking fees and product features in its Fees and Feature Builder™ and ProductBuilder™ research report tools. The expansion of MRI's research

tools follows the recent announcement by Datatron that the company would cease operations and would no longer be offering similar research. Both Fees and Feature Builder and ProductBuilder are part of MyRI, the Market Rates Insight's new subscription-based Web research portal.

'Financial institutions are experiencing compressed margins due to the flatter yield curve, so fees and product features are becoming a more important part of the profitability mix,' said Rick Barham, CEO and founder of Market Rates Insight. 'MRI has been offering our own fee and features research for a number of years, and with Datatron closing its doors, this is the perfect time to upgrade our Fees and Feature Builder and ProductBuilder tools.'

Fees and Features Builder, MRI's Web-based research tool to track fees, has been expanded to make it even more versatile and complete. Fees and Features Builder provides a competitive snapshot of offerings from competing financial institutions and gives you absolute control over critical reporting features, such as report frequency, delivery format, and criteria for your competitive set. It also allows you to use the data to design graphs, perform statistical analyses, and submit different queries to assess multiple revenue models. Fees and Features Builder provides a more complete competitive snapshot than Datatron's 'Analyzer' report.

ProductBuilder is MRI's research database which includes more than 20 years of details about financial products from institutions across the country. ProductBuilder was the first and most comprehensive searchable database of its kind, tracking innovative banking products, bundled offerings, and delivery methods. It's fully searchable by competitor, data, product type, and other criteria and now provides even more detailed information about competing products to help financial institutions create new product offerings.

MRI also offers ProductBuilder Alert™, a weekly newsletter alerting subscribers to interesting product bundles that financial institutions nationwide are trying to build both deposits and loans. ProductBuilder Alert offers a complete catalog of new products, and is more complete than Datatron's 'Latest Pitch' newsletter, which only tracked 100 top institutions.

For more information about Fees and Features Builder, ProductBuilder, ProductBuilder Alert and other MyRI pricing tools, visit MRI at www.marketratesinsight.com/new.

About Market Rates Insight

For more than two decades, Market Rates Insight (MRI) has been helping subscribers price with accuracy by providing banks, thrifts, credit unions, and other financial institutions with accurate market intelligence on deposits, loans, and fees. MRI uses deposit surveys, mortgage and consumer loan surveys, fee and feature studies, scanned ads, new product alerts, and market share and money fund reports to give subscribers the intelligence they need to profitably react to emerging trends. MRI's products include customized, web-enabled market research tools that report on rates, as well as online searchable databases, gauges, alerts, and dashboards that aggregate key client data to provide real-time views on how they stack up against market competitors.

Market Rates Insight is located in San Anselmo, California. For more information, see www.marketratesinsight.com.

# # #

For more information contact:

Rick Barham
Market Rates Insight
415-448-8800
Rick.barham@marketratesinsight.com

Tom Woolf
Woolf Media Relations
(415) 259-5638
tomw@woolfmedia.com